PARCC Special Access Accommodations

Continuing an ongoing dialogue on ensuring all students have an equality opportunity to meaningfully access curriculums, CLE provided comments on a draft version of Special Access Accommodations criteria for the PARCC assessment. CLE notes that the current criteria preclude students from being validly assessed in a manner consistent with the PARCC's claims, contrary to both the Standards for Educational and Psychology Testing and their rights under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. By so restrictively limiting access to special access accommodations like read-aloud, calculators, scribe, PARCC fails to eliminate the barriers for a much wider range of students whose disabilities -- however severe—impede them from fully accessing and demonstrating their knowledge and skills.

The comments also provide suggestions to correct the mismatch between the criteria and what is needed to fully access the assessments, in order that valid inferences about students skills, relative to the PARCC identified core standards claims, can be made.